Saturday, March 23, 2013

My heart is on fire

Feeling still a bit hung over from the wonderful, perfect, everything-went-as-it-should've-and-better photo-shoot in Holland. Thought to write here a diary-like story of 1 normal day of 2 crazy Finnish women...

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I woke up 04:50, like usual. Well rested after sleeping on the floor of Paulina's office, surrounded by boxes filled with Weranna's summer products.

Looking outside - still dark, but I can hear the rain...shit. Oh well, surely it will turn into sun before we need to take off...Luckily it is not SNOWING (at least not yet, like promised for these agreed 2 days the previous week)...Had to go through a few thoughts a week before, when starting to make necessary reservations and arrangements. Shall we try this in Finland or Sweden instead?? No, how could we, there's like 2 meters of snow everywhere!! How about Istanbul? To this we actually gave some serious thought, but it was a little tight to start organizing everything - who knows what kinds of permissions you need to be shooting in Istanbul (probably not that complicated, but you never know).

Got up, put some coffee on and crawled on the couch in the living room. NICE. Went through the news, the mail, the chat, pinterest, some blogs I follow regularly...and wrote a post I had promised to http://www.villetolvanen.com/2013/03/20/verkkokaupan-perustaminen-oravanpyorasta-umpihankeen-2/ - after it has been read thousands of times, I'm a bit embarrassed of not putting more effort in it. Oh well, some day I will learn. May be.

Paulina is awake, we go through the plans and look outside - still raining, but it WILL NOT when we'll get to the beach. We'll need to build the tent, and we'll need the dinner. And lot's of detail and hang-around photos on the beach. A sign, some textures and inspirational colors.

My heart is on fire, but my mind is trying to say - you two really have lost it...How will you ever be able to do any summer photo-shoot, when it is +5 and raining?? And I tell the rational me - It will be perfect, don't think about it, it is not snowing!!

You know the Amsterdam apartments? Narrow (about 60-70 cm wide) stairs directly to the sky? I drive the rental car in front of the house, trying not to hit any cyclists, and we load it - sweating. We actually manage to get out of the city without getting lost or hitting anybody. The first wide smiles - we made it this far!!

Behind the scenes - spring/summer 2013

Arriving to the beach - the sun is shining!! It is a lot of stuff to carry down to the beach. Especially the metal trunk - heavy SOB! The sand is wet and....well, let's call it exercise.

We manage to get a lot of stuff done. Even I (ME!!) manage to get some decent photos taken with my Canon IXUS. Paulina's comment: 'Well, at least the camera is WHITE...' I'm looking at the weather front approaching, my hands freezing, and Paulina is getting a bit nervous - don't look at it, it won't come this way...Until it did. At some point our stuff started getting so wet we just had to leave. Our pants covered in wet sand. Our stuff covered in wet sand. Everywhere...well...wet sand.

We go and have some late lunch in one of the many beach-side restaurants - Kibbeling, fried white fish with salad. Delicious. Drive to the city - without realizing before the next morning that there is a parking ticket glued to the windshield.

We do the same exercise carrying the boxes and stuff upstairs - and finally drop on the couch around 17:30. With a nice glass of red wine in front of us. Nobody has the energy to go and buy food. Or more red wine. We survive on previous day's left-over salad. And some chocolate raisins. We get all our energy from the beautiful photos taken at the beach the same day <3.

2 crazy Finnish women in Holland - if the big brands can do it, we can do it. So many things could've gone wrong, but nothing did. We don't even think of the broken lantern, or the broken ceramics which we glued together with Paulina's nail glue ;). And we do the same the next day:

Someone said - welcome home from your photo-shoot holiday. Yes, it was a dream-come-true, but perhaps not a holiday - after all!

Souraya, thanks! It was a a lot of hysterical laughing and long days, and I really really hope the pictures tell what we were feeling and what we would like you to feel seeing the photos - just pure happy :)!